While the Sanitation Commissioner is taking heat, many people are forgetting about the MTA. According to the following article from the NY Daily News, the MTA failed miserably in its operations, causing the transit system to be paralyzed. Also of interest is mind-boggling video footage on the FlatbushScoop of how the MTA is clearing the snow from the train tracks in Brooklyn.

The MTA failed to follow its own emergency protocol before the blizzard that crippled large swaths of the subway system, the Daily News has learned.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority didn’t declare its highest-level Winter Operations Plan 4 in effect until Sunday when the storm was underway, officials confirmed Wednesday.

An all-hands-on-deck declaration should have been made on Saturday when the forecast first predicted a blizzard would slam the city, the 300-page plan says.

Instead, the Level 1 plan – the lowest – was officially in effect Friday into Sunday.

“I’m appalled,” a veteran NYC Transit manager said yesterday. “I’ve never seen us fall apart this way.”

An MTA official downplayed the lack of a declaration, saying the agency began gearing up for the storm Saturday without a formal directive.

The plan details critical tasks for each forecast level – including storing passenger trains in tunnels, placing portable heaters to prevent the icing of third rails and switches, and preparing snow-fighting equipment.

As the Daily News has reported, the authority’s efforts were hampered by a manpower shortage due in part to holiday vacations. Some workers who were off couldn’t make it in because of impassable roads, officials said.

Whatever the reason, several diesel locomotives that don’t require third-rail electricity – valuable equipment in keeping the rails clear and rescuing stranded passengers – were stuck in outer-borough rail-yards, sources said.

In one instance, a diesel was deployed on the Nos. 2 and 5 lines in the Bronx and should have run throughout the storm, said the NYC Transit manager, who is directly involved in train operations.

Instead, it returned to the yard, apparently for a crew change, but no one was there to take over, and it got snowed in, he said.

Another diesel locomotive never made it out of the same yard, the manager said. And one of the giant snow-thrower trains – capable of removing several tons of snow an hour – also sat idle for at least part of the blizzard, according to the manager.

In another lapse, some portable heating devices didn’t work, he said.

A longtime motorman assigned to another yard said it took hours for workers to dig out and put ice-scraping “shoes” on a locomotive used to clear tracks in the yard, he said.

In past storms, the diesel would have been stored at the mouth of a tunnel or barn, the motorman said.

Several parked trains that normally would have been put in service remained parked in that yard because there weren’t enough crew members to operate them, the motorman said.

Running trains frequently, including diesel and empty passenger trains, is a tactic used to keep rails from icing up or becoming covered in drifts.

“They definitely blew it,” the motorman said.

“It was systemwide failure,” said Kevin Harrington, a vice president with Transport Workers Union Local 100.

The MTA did not respond to specific claims but released a statement promising a “full review of our response” to the sixth-largest snowstorm in the city history.

“We did our best to provide service and protect our equipment given the severity of the storm,” it said.

(Source: NY Daily News)